Christmas in Sunnydale
by Sue Penkivech
Summary: Christmas in Sunnydale can be described a lot of ways, but boring is never one of them.


Disclaimer: I don't own Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I wish I did, because, y'know, the whole money thing would be nice? But sadly I don't. This is written as a belated Christmas present to Tory – please forgive any huge canon mistakes as I'm only ¾ of the way through Season 4 and this takes place…sometime after that. Let's just call it the "near-Buffyverse", shall we?

Huge thanks to Oldprydefan for beta-ing. It's my first Buffy fic ever – please read and review!

**Christmas in Sunnydale**

They were arguing again.

Xander pulled his pillow over his head in attempt to drown out the cacophony emanating from his house. And was promptly scratched by a twig that had woven itself into the fabric.

He loved the holidays. Really.

Biting back a few choice words (for no reason other than he didn't want to add to the ones he was trying to drown out), he sat up and began picking random bits of yard debris from his pillowcase. The relatives were really on a roll this year; he could only hope, for the sake of any potential victims, that Uncle Rory wasn't planning on driving home.

Consoling himself with the knowledge that more than likely Uncle Rory wouldn't be able to find the door let alone his car keys, Xander dropped his de-twigged pillow back down on top of his sleeping bag and stared up at the sky, which was conspicuously free of stars this evening due to an excess of clouds.

Still, it was a huge improvement on being inside, he reminded himself. Or at least, it was until the clouds decided to let loose with the rain. The first drop fell on the tip of his nose. The second was accompanied by too many of its friends to determine exactly where it landed.

"Shit," he mumbled as he scrambled to his feet, somehow managing to stumble over the thermos of coffee he'd brought out with him in the hopes it'd still be lukewarm the following morning. Muttering further curses despite his earlier resolution not to contribute to the neighborhood's noise pollution, he scooped up his sleeping bag and draped it over his head like a tarp. And ran.

It was Christmas, after all. There had to be somebody he could intrude upon. Preferably someone with a roof, and no shouting relations.

The obvious solution, he determined as he resolutely made his way down the road looking like nothing so much as a half-drowned walking sleeping bag, was Willow. After all, Will didn't do the whole Christmas thing. You didn't even _mention_ the whole Christmas thing in her house, and she'd actually braved his basement earlier in the week for their annual watching of the Charlie Brown Christmas special, since the dorms were closed for the holidays. Willow would save him from family-induced holiday madness, he assured himself. And the rain. Being saved from the rain was pretty much key at the moment.

The only consolation to the whole "trudging down the road covered by a soaked sleeping bag" thing was that any self-respecting vamps were probably indoors. Or underground. Or anywhere where downpouring rain wasn't, which at least meant he didn't have to be miserable and keep his guard up simultaneously.

"What, not indoors singing Christmas carols and getting pissed on eggnog, or whatever you lot do on Christmas these days?" a familiar, British-accented voice jeered from across the street.

Right. Any self-respecting vamp. Trust him to run into the local crazy one.

"Don't you melt when you come into contact with water or something?" he retorted without missing a step. Or without missing half a step, anyway, but he figured having bleached-blonde, chipped vamps calling out to him warranted missing half a step. At least. Possibly even a whole one, or a trip over the crack in the sidewalk. Which he hadn't done, so he was probably ahead of the game.

The vamp in question just laughed, and Xander heard puddle splashes indicating that peroxide-head had decided to cross over for a chat. And didn't _he_ feel lucky?

"Haven't seen Rosenberg melt yet, and she's the witch, not me. Read the Oz books, then? Would've thought 'em over your reading level."

"Saw the movie," Xander admitted grudgingly, then paused and turned to look at the dripping vamp. One thing to be said for all the hair gel Spike used – _his_ hair wasn't plastered to his face. At the moment, that was almost an incentive to try some of the crap himself. "Want to spare me the pleasantries and get to the real insults? I'm sort of in a hurry to be anywhere that's not here. Some of us can still catch pneumonia from standing around in the pouring rain."

Spike, surprisingly, just smirked and threw out his arms in a gesture that unconvincingly bespoke total innocence of any desire for him to experience a slow, painful death. Or a fast, not painful death for that matter – he rather doubted the biteless vamp had any real preference. "Hey, thought I'd ask if you'd fancy a pint. Christmas and all that. But if you've got some sort of death wish and you ask nice, I could probably arrange it for you." He waved his arm in the direction of the DeSoto. "Coming?"

Xander blinked. When he'd asked for a roof and no relatives, he hadn't exactly had Spike in mind. He mentally reviewed his options.

1) Wander down the road in the middle of the night until he ran into some of Spike's even less reputable former friends.

2) Wander down the road in the middle of the night until there wasn't a square inch of him that was dry, and turn up at Willow's door looking like a half-drowned rat. For which Willow would forgive him, but her mom might not.

3) Try and get hold of Anya. He wasn't entirely sure, though, that spending Christmas with Anya would be much of an improvement on his parents and Uncle Rory.

4) Get a ride with the annoying but probably still reasonably harmless vampire. And hope that, given his already sucktastic holiday, the rain didn't short out the chip currently rendering said vamp incapable of inducing severe bodily harm on his person.

Grumbling something about how he just _knew_ he was going to regret this, Xander followed Spike to his car.

"How do you see out?" he asked Spike curiously as he scrambled into the passenger seat, pushing onto the floor a diverse assortment of beer bottles, empty cigarette packs, and little medical-looking bags he really didn't want to examine too closely. He'd always wondered about that, actually – given the amount of whatever it was that Spike had coated the DeSoto's windows with, he could barely see that there _was_ an outside.

"Can't, really," Spike replied with a smirk. "But you've got that whole death wish thing going anyway, so it really doesn't matter, does it?"

Before Xander could reply, the car squealed away from the curb. And after that, he was too busy hanging on to anything he could grab to remember what he'd been planning to say anyway. Even if Spike could have heard him over the blaring stereo.

"Do you not have a volume control in this thing?" he shouted over the music, then braced himself for potential impact as Spike took a corner at about 80 mph. "Holy crap, you really _are_ trying to kill – look out!" he yelled as the car nearly took out a pedestrian.

A very familiar looking pedestrian, even crouched as she was under an umbrella decorated with overly cheerful yellow smiley faces. In fact, he was fairly certain only one person in Sunnydale owned an umbrella like that…

"Bugger, it's Red," Spike muttered as he slammed on the brakes and the DeSoto spun nearly 360 degrees before coming to a stop. Xander took the opportunity to reach over and turn down the music to a level less likely to cause nearby buildings to crumble to dust, then took a deep breath and exhaled it slowly. Right. Willow not dead, good. Eardrums in less danger of breaking, also good. While he determined that all in all, nothing too horrible had happened yet, Spike was cranking down the window and leaning of the car and called out, "What, does everyone in Sunny-hell celebrate Christmas by trying to drown themselves?"

Willow, who'd been frozen with either fear or outright fascination at the car's near miss, continued to gape for a moment. Apparently the shock wore off though, and she waved at the driver then headed over to the passenger side. "Hey! No, not trying to do the drowning thing," she answered. "Or the Christmas thing, really. I just, well, I tried to call – Xander!" she broke off excitedly as she opened the passenger's door.

"The one and only," he replied with as broad a grin as he could muster, squirming over and trying to split the difference between getting too close to Spike for comfort and still allowing Willow enough room to squish in. "So, you're looking for me?" he asked, more than a little gratified that his oldest friend had headed out in the pouring rain to brighten his otherwise crappy holiday.

"Well, Buffy called and asked if we wanted to head over there for dinner," Willow said happily, then glanced over at Spike awkwardly as if belatedly remembering he was there. "I mean, dinner of the not-blood variety, because ooooh, yuck. But I'm sure you can come too. I mean, it's not like we're probably gonna be eating either, because Buffy? So not good at the cooking thing. It's more like, hang out and make fun of Wonderful Life and pretend we like the food, so you could do that too, right? Just without actually eating it?"

"Which would render you the luckiest among us," Xander conceded, then opened his mouth to protest that really, Spike shouldn't feel he needed to come or that he'd be welcome. While not quite as bad as Angel (he wasn't entirely sure that was possible after all), Spike didn't number among his favorite people, living or dead. Not even when he was playing taxi service. Sadly, the vamp in question broke into his litany before he could really get it going and began laughing.

"Dinner with the Slayer and Little Bit? Why not?" he replied with enthusiasm.

"Well, it's not like you have to," Xander felt the need to insert, then sighed as Spike ignored him completely and continued speaking.

"Gotta make a stop first, though, can't come to dinner uninvited _and_ empty-handed, now can I?"

"Oh, I'm sure Buffy wouldn't mind, really," Willow inserted, then let out a squeak and slammed the passenger door shut as the DeSoto squealed into motion once more.

* * *

"And we're here…why?" Xander asked as he eyed the sign of Willy's bar warily through the coated windshield.

Spike smirked. "Well, Willy's open, right? Not many places that are. You two stay here, I'll be right back," he added as he climbed out the door and shrugged his trenchcoat up over his head, then made a dash for the building.

"Y'know, I'm not sure this is a good idea," Willow said slowly.

Xander shifted over further into the middle of the seat so he could turn and look at her. "Well, Spike's involved. Doesn't that make it a bad idea by default? But it's just…in and out, right? What could happen?"

"Well, a lot could happen, really," Willow asserted, shifting to look at him and going into full Willow-lecture mode. "I mean, with Spike doing the slice, dice and stake thing lately? I kinda doubt they're going to be all that happy to see him."

"And anyone ever was?" Xander pointed out, nonetheless directing a nervous glance toward the door just to be certain there was no danger of imminent demonic invasion before turning back to Willow. "I mean, I was never –"

As he was coming to expect this evening, his words were cut off by the sound of a body coming through the door of Willy's bar. Without the courtesy of the door having been opened first. Further cursory examination identified the body in question as that of Spike, who wasted no time jumping to his feet and waving a fist at the door.

"Oh, real brave, teamin' up on me," he shouted. "Bet yer not so brave one on one, are you?"

"Okay. This cannot end well," Xander informed a wide-eyed Willow, then quickly slid into the driver's seat as the door to Willy's began to open.

To reveal the biggest, ugliest demon he'd ever seen.

Well, maybe not quite, he admitted to himself as he slammed the shift into reverse and hit the gas, sending the car screeching backwards and away from the building. No, that honor just might be reserved for –

"You can't just leave him here!" Willow shouted, pulling him out of his demon-analysis as he threw the DeSoto into forward.

"Place bets?" Xander yelled back, and slammed on the brakes. "You know damn well he'd do the same thing to us!"

"Well, yeah, but…he's supposed to!" Willow retorted. "It goes with the vampire-y demon thing! Plus, this is grand theft auto," she nodded, a stubborn expression on her face that held just a trace of smug-ness. "He could have you arrested."

"Right, like Spike's going to run to the cops and tell them his stolen car got stolen." Nonetheless, Xander leaned forward to peer out the spot on the windshield where the axle grease or whatever it was was the thinnest, then gave the steering wheel a sharp turn. He hit the gas, aiming straight at the eight foot green monstrosity that looked as if it were going to body slam Spike any second. The car's momentum threw the demon back into the wall – not as decisively as Xander had hoped, but at least it slowed it down a bit.

"Get in!" Willow yelled out the window.

"Right! See what happens when you take on Big Bad! End up runnin' back to your mates with your tail between your legs, eh?" Spike shouted at the demon as he scrambled to his feet, looking as if perhaps his leg wasn't working quite as well as it had been ten minutes before. Xander couldn't quite find it in his heart to feel sorry for him.

The demon pulled away from the wall with a roar, and Spike dove in through Willow's open window.

"Who the hell said you could drive, Harris?" Spike complained as the car jerked into reverse and then forward in quick succession.

Xander just rolled his eyes and floored the gas, leaving a shouting, slightly dented demon in their exhaust. "We saved him again, why?" he complained to Willow.

"Right. Like I need you lot to save me," Spike sniffed, then shifted around despite protestations from Willow until he was sitting beside her.

"Y'know, we can just drop you off back there. If you want…" Xander observed and made as if to turn the car around.

"Right. Red won't let you, will ya Red?" the vampire smirked in response, draping an arm around Willow's shoulders. "Quite fancies me, y'know. Wanted me to bite her a while back."

"No…I mean, I didn't _want_ you to, I just, well…no!," Willow stammered, pushing Spike away when he took a teasing move toward her neck.

"Ow!" Spike gasped, grabbing at his forehead.

"Explain to me why I thought this'd be better than my back yard?" Xander complained as he turned the car toward Buffy's and kept driving.

* * *

Much to his surprise, they managed the rest of the drive largely without incident, and Xander let out a sigh of relief as they turned into Buffy's driveway. Right. They were still alive. Definite bonus points.

Before he could do more than put the car in park, though, Dawn rushed out of the house with a jacket thrown over her head and ran around to the driver's side.

"Buffy says to meet her at North Park Cemetery – some big cosmic convergence, Giles says, y'know, world ending potential type thing," she blurted out in one breath as the rain pounded on her coat.

"Move it, Harris, I'm driving," Spike ordered, giving him a shove toward the door.

"Yeah, like that's a good plan," he grumbled as he climbed out. And no, the rain had _not_ let up, had it? Not one bit. "Let's let the crazy dead guy drive the car."

"He's not crazy!" Dawn said defensively.

"Sure I am, Little Bit," Spike drawled from the driver's seat. "Coming along, Harris? Or planning to hang out and babysit?"

"I don't need a babysitter!" Dawn argued. "I'm coming along."

"'Was thinkin' for Rupert, Sweet, not you," the vamp assured her. "Figured he might be gettin' into the sauce while everyone's gone. And sure you're coming, climb in the back with Xander."

Uh oh. This was a definite "Buffy will kill me for this" scenario if he'd ever seen one. "Hold on there," Xander argued, grabbing Dawn's shoulder as she made a dash for the back seat. "You're not coming."

"Am too!" she disputed, shrugging his hand away.

"Umm, Dawn, I think you could really be, y'know, a bigger help if you, well, stayed here and relayed messages and stuff?" Willow suggested tentatively.

"Wot? If she wants to come, she should come," Spike argued.

Xander tuned out the resultant dispute and climbed in the back seat, fighting an urge to smile. One thing never changed.

Holidays in Sunnydale were always a lot more interesting than "It's a Wonderful Life."


End file.
